


Hunting for Christmas - (Not) A Hallmark Channel Original Movie

by notanescalator



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Gabriel is once again showing he cares in a dubious way, Lots of hot cocoa, M/M, Sam is very tired, because I've lost control of my life, limited Christmas music due to the price of royalties, margot it's 2020 why on earth are you writing SPN fanfic, not so much Fake Dating as Fake Falling in Love, we never got enough Cas-Gabriel brotherly content did we, what is the timeline for this? your guess is as good as mine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notanescalator/pseuds/notanescalator
Summary: Gabriel is sick of watching Cas and Dean dance around each other, so he decides to do the logical thing and trap them in a romantic Christmas movie in the hope that they will finally address their feelings. Because what are super-powered older brothers for?Dean and Cas are not amused. But Dean remembers that "playing along" is what got them through their stint in TV land, so its worth another try. And it's just to fool Gabriel long enough to let them out... right?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Hunting for Christmas - (Not) A Hallmark Channel Original Movie

It was December 24th, and no creature was stirring. Not even a Wendigo.

That is to say, it had been a good few weeks without so much as a regular, small-fry case, let alone some world-shattering event involving pain and trauma and dramatic conversations. So when Dean and Sam were sitting around the library table in a state of unusual calm – Dean cleaning his gun and Sam nose-deep in a book – and there was the sound of flapping wings, they both assumed their luck had run out.

Dean sighed and dropped his cleaning rod onto the table. “Okay, lay it on me, Cas.”

Cas hesitated, perplexed. “Lay... what on you?”

Sam made a strange noise from the other side of the table, but Dean ignored it. “Whatever bad news you've come to deliver. Heaven wants us dead again? Nessie's awake and she's pissed? What is it.”

Cas sighed. “Well, I don't know who Nessie is, but I don't have any bad news.” He looked slightly offended at essentially being called a bad omen. “However, it has been a while since we talked, so I came to check in on you.” He waved a hand from Dean to Sam. “The pair of you.”

Dean looked pointedly past Cas to where Gabriel stood, as casual as you like. “And him?”

Cas squinted minutely, suggesting that he was reining in some great frustration. “Ah, yes. Gabriel thinks we should-” he broke out the sad finger quotes “-'bond more.' And evidently that includes him... tagging along.”

“Hey, I thought _someone_ in our family should act like normal siblings.” Gabriel strutted out of the room, and there was the distant sound of him rooting around, presumably in the kitchen.

“If you ask me you've got a long way to go,” Dean called.

“I'm not taking cues from you knuckleheads.” Gabriel reappeared, brandishing a half-eaten cherry pie and a surly grin. “Key word _normal_ siblings? Not co-dependent and self-destructive.”

Dean made a noise akin to a growl and got to his feet, pointing his finger like a loaded gun. “You are _not_ eating that. I am saving that for later.”

“Can't you conjure up your own food?” Sam sighed, eyes half closed as if to block out the stupidity of the situation.

But Gabriel ignored him. “Sharing is caring, Dean.”

He started to lift off the plastic cover and Dean was halfway across the room before Cas slipped in front of him, arm outstretched. Dean came to a stop just as Cas's fingertips touched his shirt, still glaring daggers over at Gabriel.

Cas kept his eyes on Dean as if he were confronting a wild animal, and said: “Gabriel, put the pie back.”

The archangel did a full-body, theatrical groan. “Fii-ine. But he is being a terrible host.” He stalked out and there was the distant sound of the refrigerator door slamming. Dean flinched, as if worried about the pie getting _hurt_.

“You stalking Cas doesn't make you our guest,” Dean grumbled, sitting down forcefully to make it clear how he felt about the whole thing.

“What is this?” Cas asked, pointing to something by one of the pillars.

“Hm?” Sam leaned back in his chair so that he could see. “Oh.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “That's, uh, our Christmas tree.”

Cas looked silently at Sam, and then down at the tree, which was rather misshapen, bare, and on the point of tipping over.

“There was a fire, I presume.”

Dean burst out laughing.

Sam let the book he was holding drop to the table, exasperated. “It was the last one they had in the store, okay?! The last one that would fit through the door.”

Cas bent to inspect the sad plant, and as he touched one of the branches a handful of needles drifted to the floor, joining a growing pile. He looked genuinely concerned.

“I'm not sure this was a worthy investment.”

“See how bad you screwed up Christmas, Sam?” Dean asked, sounding profoundly amused. “You've offended the angel.”

Cas hummed as he stood up. “From what I've seen, the... mainstream celebration of Christmas for humans has very little to do with the Bible.”

“Yeah, you know they don't even put the word _Christmas_ on Starbucks cups anymore?” Gabriel said with mock despair.

Cas frowned. “What d--”

“Ignore him,” Dean said.

“There's a war on Christmas, little bro. You should Google it.”

“I didn't realize you celebrated,” Cas said, resolutely addressing the Winchesters. He looked over his shoulder at the tree. “If this is indeed a celebration.”

“Well, we never really made a huge deal of it,” Sam admitted. “Growing up we moved around too much to have proper Christmases. Same after Dad died. But we figured...”

“...Since we kinda have a permanent home now,” Dean continued, “we might as well do something. Y'know, it's Christmas Eve and the world isn't currently exploding and we are not at _this_ second being ripped apart in some way so...” He shrugged and Sam nodded. “Why not?”

“It's probably just gonna be takeout and movies,” Sam clarified, picking up his book again.

“I'm gonna try and salvage Sam's twig with some lights. You're welcome to join, Cas.” Dean tapped Cas's arm, and then grabbed it, suddenly looking serious. “Did I make you watch _Die Hard_ yet?”

“Not a Christmas movie,” Sam piped up.

“I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that, Sammy.”

“I recall there was a list,” Cas said, “of movies you deemed most important for my pop culture education. We had not reached _Die Hard_ yet.”

“Then you're staying, Cas. You can experience a human, if very Winchester-style, Christmas.”

Gabriel stood at the end of the table, having watched the way Dean grasped his brother's arm, the intimacy of it. He had noticed how, even as Dean slowly let go of Cas, the two had continued to talk to each other as if neither Gabriel nor Sam was present. How Dean looked up at Cas with eyes glinting with amusement, of undeniable fondness. How Cas gazed back down at him in his softer expression of amusement, of absolute focus on Dean.

Gabriel had seen Dean's dark side plenty of times, and he was aware of how – after all these years – that darkness had flooded closer and closer to the surface. All the battles, all the resurrections, all the betrayals. All the death. It chipped away at you, Gabriel knew. Like Dean, he covered his own scars with a personal brand of whimsy and snark. But what he saw on Dean's face was not the defense mechanism, it was the real thing. This was happiness, this was ease, this was...

And as for Cas, well. Gabriel was still learning about his brother, about how to _be_ a brother again. But Cas had been an obedient soldier long after Gabriel jumped off the runaway train that was their family. Drinking the Kool-Aid for countless centuries about the danger of emotion, of doubt, of disobedience. His personality still had echoes of what Cas was built to be. The fear, the difficulty in connecting, the hard-wired loyalty.

(Although now that loyalty was to the Winchesters. More specifically, to Dean.)

Cas had a darkness too, and a power that – while not as great as Gabriel's – was fearsome, strong enough to pull the world apart at the seams if not completely destroy it or blink it out of existence. He had seen creatures and civilizations form and grow, tear themselves apart and form again. And this same angel was now looking down at a single human like he was the most wondrous thing the world could produce.

“How do you stand it?” Gabriel whispered, stepping closer to Sam.

“Huh?”

Gabriel nodded his head at their brothers. “That. Every time I see them together, they're like this. They're so wrapped up in each other, I feel like if you were on fire right now they wouldn't notice.”

Sam chuckled awkwardly. “And?”

Gabriel gaped at him. “ _And?_ Don't you want them to actually _do_ something about it?”

Sam closed his book, apparently giving up on the pipe dream of reading it. “Of course I do, but they're two grown...” Sam faltered, frowning. “Well, I mean Cas isn't exactly... And Dean doesn't _act_ like he's grown but... Look, the point is, only _they_ can do something about it.” He got to his feet, looking over at Dean and Cas, and smiling briefly before turning back to Gabriel. “I mean what can you do? Tell them they're playing Seven Minutes In Heaven and shove them in a closet together?”

As Sam walked off to replace the book, Gabriel stood very still, letting that last sentence turn over in his mind. Sam had been joking, of course. But it had given Gabriel an idea, albeit a much more creative one, steadily expanding and mapping itself out.

It was difficult, Gabriel understood, to address your all-consuming love for someone when you were both constantly saving the world and dying. You needed some space, a little vacation from reality in order to do that, to talk about the little, selfish things. Fortunately, Gabriel could provide that vacation.

Cas might not appreciate it at first, Gabriel knew he had to be prepared for that. But he was trying to be a better brother, and this was for Cas's own good.

*

The night had gone pretty nice, Dean thought. Maybe the most normal Christmas Eve Dean had ever had, mercifully untainted by dysfunctional childhood or, you know, his oncoming death by Hellhounds.

After manhandling some colored lights around the sad little tree, and scotch-taping some more to the pillars – Cas had dutifully unspooled the lights as Dean stuck them down – they had all settled around the TV with some beers and watched movies. It had felt strangely normal, despite half the group being made up of angels. Even Gabriel had behaved himself, apart from bragging about the time he romanced Donna Reed for half of _It's A Wonderful Life_.

By the time they reached _Die Hard_ , Sam's yawning had become distracting to the point where Dean told him to just go to sleep already, and without Dean realizing Gabriel had disappeared, leaving Dean and Cas alone.

“I can see that this was indeed a formative movie for you,” Cas had said at some point, focusing so much that Dean couldn't help be endeared by it, and ended up watching his reactions half the time. At first he didn't think Cas was enjoying it at all, his expression so serious, but eventually he noticed that Cas was leaning forward more and more throughout the movie.

He didn't say much, occasionally a short retort to a comment Dean made, such as:

“Y'know I like to think me and John are a lot alike.”

“Oh. The fear of flying, for example?”

Which caused Dean to sulk unnoticed in silence for about three minutes. Mostly, though, Cas just absorbed. Every so often Dean would quote along, and Cas's eyes would flicker over to him, stay there a moment and then return to the screen.

When the credits finally rolled, Dean leaned back and looked over at Cas, bright eyed with satisfaction.

“So? Whadya think?”

Cas visibly considered, as if he were having to solve some cosmic problem rather than giving his opinion on a blockbuster.

“Well... I find it unlikely that the vengeful blonde man-”

“Karl.”

“- _Karl -_ would've survived his injuries long enough to try and kill John at the end. But I understand the artistic license makes it more exciting.”

“...Right.” Dean blinked once, shrugged in disbelief. “That's-that's all you have to say?”

Cas's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly. “No. Also that I do see the resemblance between you and John McClane.” He looked over at Dean, eyes open and earnest. “You are both incredibly brave men who would welcome danger on yourself in order to save others.”

Dean's lips moved uselessly, abruptly speechless. When he made the comment he had been thinking more along the lines of, 'looks like a badass, is good at one-liners, pretty handsome dude if I do say so myself' and he had been half-joking. It was just damn typical of Cas to come along with a disarming compliment that Dean had no idea how to respond to, let alone attempt to believe.

Cas wasn't even looking at him now, though, instead occupied with reading the back of the DVD case.

“Were there any more movies you planned to watch?”

At some point, the beer and the late hour had lulled Dean to sleep with the help of the dialogue on the TV. He had nodded off for maybe a few minutes when he felt cool fingers against his jaw, and opened his eyes to see Cas standing over him. Those blue eyes were fixed on him so intently, that for a moment Dean was caught in them, his sleep-fogged brain unable to process what was going on. And then his instincts kicked in and he assumed the worst, jolting a little in the chair.

“What's wrong, Cas?” he asked, blinking around in search of some threat or damage to the bunker.

“Nothing, Dean, but I think you should go to bed. It will be uncomfortable sleeping in that chair.” Cas had his hand on his shoulder, Dean realized, just seconds before Cas let go. He straightened up, stepping away from Dean a little. “I remember enough of being human to regret doing such things.”

“Oh, right.” Dean chuckled, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, good call.”

He waited until Cas moved out of the way and then flicked off the TV, standing up and stretching until his joints clicked. As he lowered his arms, and gathered up the empty beer bottles, a thought came to his mind.

“Hey, Cas? What do you do at night, anyway?”

Cas pushed his chair under the table and followed Dean to the kitchen. “Hm, sometimes I go to Kyoto. It's a little past 5pm there right now so there's still a lot of people around, and there's a shrine with these tunnels of beautiful red gates. Other times, I might just go to the 24-hour diner – if you recall there's one just a few blocks away – and sit there and watch people come in and out. Those places have a different atmosphere at night. And there's a waitress there, Luisa, who is very pleasant to talk to. She and her wife are currently in the process of adopting a dog.” He smiled slightly, warmly, and then looked over at Dean. “And sometimes I just stay here, in the bunker. I read, or simply sit and reflect, and I feel better knowing I'm nearby if there's any trouble.”

Dean stood against the sink, just looking at Cas for a moment. He honestly forgot sometimes that Cas, who seemed so present in their lives, was this grand celestial being who could move so fluidly through the world. Who experienced things on a level Dean couldn't imagine, and had millennia of experiences just living inside him. And now to be reminded of that, it was crazy to think that sometimes he just chose to stay here, in Dean and Sam's home, precisely _because_ it was their home. That when Dean was asleep in bed, Cas was drifting around a few rooms away, watching over them.

It was embarrassing how much that thought comforted him.

He realized they had been doing that thing where they sort of stared at each other, and he cleared his throat, ears tingling. “Right. Well, goodnight, Cas,” he said finally, passing by him as he headed to the door, “and uh, if you do spend the night here, no parties, okay?”

He patted Cas on the shoulder, and went off to his room. And when he lay in the dark a little later, the memory of Cas's fingers on his skin felt achingly fresh.

When Dean awoke, it was to the persistent blare of an alarm.

 _Weird_ , he thought, bleary eyed and legs kicking in the bed to dislodge the sheets around them. _Why did I set an alarm._ But as he reached for the bedside table where he kept his phone, his hand grasped only air. No phone, no table. Confused, he opened his eyes properly, gazed around... and lurched upright.

He wasn't in the bunker.

**Author's Note:**

> This November-December timeline has been absolute madness, and throwing myself into Christmas movies while dealing with the ongoing Destiel debacle has shoved this idea to the foreground of my jumbled brain. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fruits of my insanity.
> 
> Also, there is some maybe artistic license with the bunker in this but hey.


End file.
